The present invention generally relates to a communication control equipment and a communication control method for connecting a computer or the like to a network. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a communication control equipment and a communication control method capable of performing a highspeed data transmission process from the computer or the like to the network. Also, the present invention is related to a data transfer equipment and a data transfer method used in the above-described communication control equipment and communication control method.
As the conventional method for reducing data transmission process time with respect to the data transmission request issued from the host layer (user), for instance, Japanese patent publication JP-A-3-125538 entitled "PACKET DIVIDING METHOD" is known. In this conventional method, when transmission data from the host layer is subdivided into a plurality of packets and then these packets are transmitted to the network, the data packet is sent out to the network at a time instant that the transmission data amount received from the host layer has reached the maximum packet length of the divided data packet without waiting for the completion of receiving all transmission data, so that transmission delay time is reduced.
Thus, in accordance with the above-described conventional method, the data transfer operation to the network is commenced before the reception of all transmission data is accomplished. When attention is paid to a certain packet corresponding to the unit of the data transmission to the network, the data is transferred to the network after 1-packet data has been received. As a consequence, this conventional communication control method becomes effective if such a network whose maximum packet length is short is employed. However, with respect to a network whose maximum packet length is great, the delay time measured until the packet is sent out to the network, is still long.